[labnetwork] Silane quantity

[Mac Hathaway]

Hey All,

Here at Harvard CNS, we've got two bottles on line, each in a "normal" 
9x51 inch cylinder.  One is 100% SiH4, 6x9's purity, 26 lbs when new 
(not sure the number of cubic feet).  The other is 3% SiH4 in Argon, 211 
c.f.

These have both been on line for the last 7 years or so, and probably 
have a few more years left on them.  We have generally treated 
expiration dates as more a marketing thing than a technical issue.  It 
would be interesting to hear of any experiences folks have had with gas 
expiration issues.  We have debated going to smaller bottles for these, 
but the risk balance seems to be favor large bottles and fewer changes.

We did reduce our bottle sizes on some other materials due to Homeland 
Security concerns...


Mac

Mac Hathaway

Senior Process and Systems Engineer

Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems

11 Oxford St.

Cambridge, MA02138

617-495-9012


On 1/7/2015 4:24 PM, Matthieu Nannini, Dr. wrote:
> Bob:
>
> Fully agreed. Most large spectacular accidents that scare the hell of 
> EHS dept. (at least mine) when they google « silane safety » are from 
> large PV solar factories where bottle changes occur much more often 
> that in our academic fabs. As such, danger there might be 
> underestimated. So smaller quantities leading to more bottle changes 
> might very well be less secure.
>
>
> Matthieu
>
>
> Le 2015-01-07 à 14:32, Bob Hamilton <roberthamilton at berkeley.edu 
> <mailto:roberthamilton at berkeley.edu>> a écrit :
>
>> Fab Colleagues,
>>
>> I'll add, as a general policy about gas cylinder safety, given modern 
>> gas cabinets, toxic gas monitoring systems and orbitally-welded 
>> distribution the most likely time for a corrosive, pyrophoric or 
>> toxic gas incident to occur is during a cylinder change-out.
>>
>> My statement draws on presentations by Eugene Ngai who is often 
>> described as the "silane guru". Retired chemical eningeer Eugene Ngai 
>> has done an excellent job of documenting silane incidents and safety 
>> practices.
>>
>> Arguing for smaller quantities of dangerous gases is in many cases an 
>> argument for less safety.
>>
>> Bob Hamilton
>>
>> -- 
>> Robert Hamilton
>> University of California at Berkeley
>> Marvell NanoLab
>> Equipment Eng. Mgr.
>> Room 520 Sutardja Dai Hall
>> Berkeley, CA 94720-1754
>> bob at eecs.berkeley.edu
>> Phone: 510-809-8600
>> Mobile: 510-325-7557 (Emergencies only poor cell phone service in lab)e-mail preferred
>>
>>
>> On 1/7/2015 9:04 AM, Dennis Schweiger wrote:
>>> Matthie,
>>>
>>> good morning.  Here at UofMichigan, we have two cylinders on-line, 
>>> both are about 40 cubic feet.  We also have a single spare cylinder 
>>> in storage.  Our current cadence for change-out is about every 8 
>>> months.  It can vary +/- 2 months with usage.
>>>
>>> Dennis Schweiger
>>> University of Michigan/LNF
>>> 734.647.2055 Ofc
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 4:30 PM, Matthieu Nannini, Dr. 
>>> <matthieu.nannini at mcgill.ca <mailto:matthieu.nannini at mcgill.ca>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Dear colleagues,
>>>
>>>     first of all, happy new year to all of you ! May the force be
>>>     with you all !
>>>
>>>     My EHS dept. would like to compare quantity of silane on site in
>>>     different labs. So, if you can spare 30s to answer those 2
>>>     questions then you can go chasing the student that left the
>>>     evaporator at atmosphere during christmas:
>>>     - how much silane do you use yearly ?
>>>     - what is the cylinder volume you have ?
>>>
>>>     cheers
>>>
>>>     Matthieu
>>>     McGill Nanotools
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>>>
>>>
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